Tuesday, December 26, 2017

Dream Catcher

The Lee A. Tregurtha

The
grey ghost of a harbor town like Duluth has always held tight to a corner of my
imagination. Growing up landlocked it was the closest I’d ever gotten to a real
ocean. After college, it was an exotic weekend destination with an assortment
of friends. Susan and I made the pilgrimage a number of times to sit on some
granite bluff and wax philosophically about our lives and destiny. Later in
life the ‘dream catcher’ became my weekend nest when it wasn’t being rented
out.

Canal Park | Duluth, MN

The
North Shore was the setting for one of my first screenplays and a lot of subsequent
treatments; some of which came to fruition and others that never quite materialized
into novels or plays. It was training ground for Melanie and me while building
up mileage for the Twin Cities Marathon. It was a wonderful place for Sharon
and me to get lost wandering the rocky shoreline and surrounding woods.

This
summer Sharon and I journeyed back up north for the first time in a long time.
It was a welcome retreat to the land of scented pine trees and sea-salt
breezes. Lake Superior hasn’t changed nor has the blanket of green hugging its
shoreline. The feelings came tumbling back in wonderful memories of the North
Shore and that great inland ocean.

Memories
have a funny way of embellishing the good times and diminishing the bad ones. Time
and progress keep moving forward and the North Shore is no exception. Duluth
has been steadily improving its downtown core but along the way commercialism
has crept closer to my old haunts.

A ghost returns

For
example, Canal Park has unfortunately gotten more crowded and commercial. Parking
meters blanket the area and the loose casual hippie atmosphere has been
replaced by a land rush to corral as much of the tourist dollar as possible.
Never-the-less it still it provides a fun place to watch those ocean-going
behemoth ships trailed by minnow sailboats ply the harbor waters.

It’s
still a place to imagine what it would be like crewing on one of those
ocean-going vessels. That fantasy was first ignited in my imagination back in
high school (blog: Old Man and the Sea). It hasn’t left since. Too little,
too late, too long ago but still it keeps poking its curious head up every once
in a while.

The
next morning a bone-chilling fog has snuck into town with the morning dew. It
was enveloping and blinding and provided just the right atmosphere for my noir
movie if only the script was complete. Fog is a constant reminder of that
inland ocean on top of the city. It only adds to the mystery and intrigue that
makes Duluth the perfect spot for story ideas.

Our
involvement with Duluth and the North Shore deepened about fifteen years ago
with ‘the Dream Catcher;’ one of only fourteen octagonal units clustered near
the main chalet on Spirit Mountain just outside of Duluth.

For
Sharon and me, ‘Dream Catcher’ was the perfect retreat from the commercial
storm below. It, along with the other Mountain Villas, are rental units each
individually owned. They provide income to their owners as well as a welcome
retreat on select weekends when they’re not being used.

We
owned our unit for over ten years and it provided an ideal place to camp out
and enjoy all that the North Shore had to offer. We both felt a tingle of
sadness when it was time to sell and move on.

I
have a lot of wonderful memories of sitting on our deck overlooking St. Louis
Bay and watching the ships pass under the lift bridge. It fueled a plethora of
storylines meant for sharing. Some were written while others remain sequestered
in a file folder. Maybe they’ll be unlocked sometime in the future under the
desert sun.